Columnist Erin Neff: Beers offers clues to what ails state’s finances

Erin Neff

Friday, Jan. 24, 2003 | 4:55 a.m.

GOV. KENNY Guinn has some names for those in his own party who might stand in the way of what he calls tax progress.

They're heartless political cowards who will become irrelevant if they don't fall into step behind the Republican's top man in Nevada. But Assemblyman Bob Beers, R-Las Vegas, who has produced for discussion a list of new programs the state has created in the past six years, has probably never been more relevant.

Beers has become the only clear spokesman for what he calls "truth, liberty and justice," or, in clearer language, tax restraint.

While other lawmakers are lining up against particular taxes or in general support of the $1 billion Guinn is trying to raise, Beers is framing a philosophical argument.

Should Nevada continue to create new programs while it is facing a $704 million deficit or should the state shift its focus to its core responsibilities?

Beers has gone beyond, at least a tiny bit, the notion that state government is a fat, bloated behemoth ripe for liposuction.

Instead of sucking out full-day kindergarten and Nevada Check-Up, Beers said he would rather re-examine higher education money that he believes has taken the state away from its K-12 core responsibility.

When Guinn pronounced that he refuses to balance the state's budget on the backs of children, senior citizens and the poor, Beers didn't necessarily disagree.

He is neither heartless nor the coward to which Guinn indirectly refers in his more scathing condemnations of his party.

The fact that the third-term assemblyman continues to stand up for an idea that has children and women's advocates fuming, and stand up to Guinn in the process, can hardly be defined as political cowardice.

And despite his balding head providing something of a beacon for those who would attack him, Beers' heart does beat to a rhythm educators like.

Ask him how he would improve schools, and he answers with an uncharacteristic one-word response: "Money."

Beers, who has been thrust into the anti-tax poster child role and has become a darling of talk radio in the past few weeks, isn't exactly the teachers' union's favorite, but he does support increasing teacher salaries, and was endorsed by the Nevada Education Association.

He's also not anti-tax. Beers supports raising the taxes on cigarettes and liquor. He just doesn't want one proposal becoming the guiding force of tax policy in Nevada, even if it is the governor's.

Beers isn't so much suggesting the state cut any particular program -- in the way some of his colleagues have earmarked the state motor pool or state printing office.

He wants citizens -- through their lawmakers -- to discuss which programs they think deserve the state's focus. In other words, should the state continue to fund the Nevada State College at Henderson, or pay for middle school textbooks.

If lawmakers ultimately decide that they should chop away at already-stretched social services, then they'll forever be seen as heartless. Until then, blood should course through the veins of the Legislature to the beat of discussion.